From “Everything You Know is Wrong” by The Firesign Theatre (1974) – Comedy Group

Twenty five years ago I worked on a top secret military project for my company. It had been going on for some time when I started and, as far as I know, it is still going on. It was a fascinating application of technology that I would have loved to talk about with my family and friends. I was proud of what we were trying to do, my small role in the project and, of course, the ultimate application. Unsurprisingly, I am bound by employment agreement and federal law to not discuss what I did or the product that we were building.

Competitive intelligence is similarly difficult to talk about.

Just imagine that you have completed a CI project for your company or for a client. Because of your superior methods, uncommon insight and excellent timing, you uncover something that results in a significant competitive advantage for the company. Who are you going to tell? What are you allowed to say? And, what is the impact on your future work of these answers?

Therein lies the problem. It is hard to talk about CI successes.

Yes, you can discuss the success with your management sponsor. Maybe you can share your successes with colleagues at the same company. Perhaps you can abstract some lessons for more general audiences. Nevertheless, a detailed discussion of what you did is commonly antithetical to your role.

That is, a company or client is unlikely to want others to know explicitly how or when they gained a competitive advantage.

Why? Because the competitors may adjust their own strategies in response, the duration of the advantage may be lessened, the original analysis techniques may be copied or the exposure will give competitors insight into the company’s own strategic thought processes. Even when these reasons are not articulated, they are powerfully felt disincentives to talking in detail about competitive intelligence successes.

While being quiet makes sense for a company, it impedes the development of CI professionals.

Just think about the example of a great artist. Suppose that their paintings are magnificent expressing emotion and imagination that is compelling and distinctive. The artist’s technique is a textbook example of all that is good in painting. The national museum has an exhibition ongoing for the artist. However, because of competition with other museums that are trying to draw the same crowds, the national museum allows no pictures of the paintings, no discussion of the artist’s techniques and no advertising about the exhibit. If the artist is solely dependent on the good graces of the national museum, then their public career may well be stunted. At the end of the day, would that really benefit the national museum?

Here are five things that are needed to advance the general art of competitive intelligence.

We need our myths. These are the established (usually older) stories that tell dramatic success stories. In military intelligence, there are many such stories from major conflicts. From WWII, there were the code breakers in England, the capture of the Ultra device in Poland from the Germans and the ambush of Yamamoto in the south Pacific.

We need professional associations. There, likeminded people can gather to exchange encouragement, advice and credentials. Obviously the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) exists for this purpose. This is not enough. We need to be linked to professional associations frequented by our customers (i.e., American Management Association, Association for Strategic Planning). We shouldn’t miss that our generic (not just our captive management) customers can help us understand the critical competitive issues of our industry and appreciate the skills needed to decipher this picture.

We need a marketing campaign. CI people are often analytic, introspective people as well they need to be. Faced by a mountain of facts and a hazy view of the future, those personality traits equip CI professionals to make sense of it all for others. The only problem is that CI people seem to like to talk to other CI people the most. But the success of Competitive Intelligence is dependent on customer understanding. We need to know what our customers value and expect. Then, from this knowledge, we need to think like marketers rather than analysts. Marketing people are adept at telling stories that hook their audiences because the stories make emotional, value oriented connections.

We need iconic figures. Lee Iacocca became the symbol for a resurgent Chrysler in the 1980’s (where are you now, Lee?). Michael Jordan was the featured representative of excellence for basketball in the 1990’s. There are many such people that come to embody an industry or a profession. Though others don’t reach the level of these icons, the very fact that they exist is a shorthand definition of success and a voice to speak about the profession to others.

We need to relax. Part of the problem is the ferocious clamoring for attention that permeates everyone’s personal and business lives. Sell, sell, sell is the common advice for individuals and companies. If you are creating a new market segment or brand, this makes especially good sense. The fact is that (lowercase) competitive intelligence is not new and it is not going away as long as there is competition. People seem to have an innate comparison facility that is honed to observe others. It is this impulse that competitive intelligence take to a more methodical and actionable level for companies. Simply, competitive intelligence will always be relevant and the adaptable professional will succeed whatever their title.

The summary is that (lowercase) competitive intelligence will always be important. It will be done better when (uppercase) Competitive Intelligence is developed and promoted the right ways.